Can you stretch your stomach

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Hi All,

I have read almost every post on here the past couple of weeks and posted myself and received some valuable feedback. Now I am concerned though. Different topics have postings that talk about stretching your stomach out so fast by eating quickly or drinking too much water. I know we have all had different surgeons but I am worried that some give the impression that it's so easy to stretch it out. Is that true? Can anyone give some feedback that their doctors have told them so that I know? Thank you.

From what I have seen and understand after healing which can be upto a year streching should be close to impossible IF the surgery was done correctly in the first place. If it was made to big and floppy to begin with then expect problems
Late regain really is the fact you can digetst food a lot easier and faster over time and the very bad habbit of constant grazing.

I can not fit in any more than I could at 6 months and I eat until full , well use to all the time now pretty rare. BUT when I push it I KNOW I have there is no mystery bigger stomach now 18 months out from surgery for either me or the male of the species tho his final stomach size did not settle until closer to 12 months, he had a lot smaller amount until then and now is the same as me about 200-250ml. Both of us are guility as charged for snacking.

But the reality still is I had a satche of porriage for breakfast the other day then ate most of a muffin for morning tea there went my lunch no way could I fit it in. I was able to eat sooner as in mid morning rather than lunch BUT still endd up full and unable to eat a few hours later.

applesauce

Thank you everyone. I can sleep now. I have been struggling for the past two weeks. I keep going back and forth with 5 pounds. I haven't been eating much and I see on here that people stall at the 3 week mark but I haven't read where anyone has gained. I know I am retaining water because of missing my blood pressure pill but I didn't think it would cost me 5 pounds. I don't have the easiest surgeon in the world to talk to and I was hoping to go to a seminar this week but it's been cancelled. Thank goodness you all were here. I guess I just wait and be patient at this point. I just drink so much water now and keep getting afraid I am stretching it out and now I know that it's probably not so.

My dietician was adamant that the stomach can be stretched if you continue to eat past the full point. She stressed this to me because she was aware of my history of bulimia and binge eating. I don't want to test the theory but I have overeaten sometimes since the sleeve and do worry about it.

My doc also told me that there would be little, if any, stretching. The extra room comes from the healing process, not stretching, and not to worry about it.
But you can put on weight by eating high calorie foods, and by grazing rather than sticking to regular meals, which is not the same as stretching your stomach. He told me that this is the real thing to be concerned about, and especially around the 9-12 month mark.
Hope this helps.
Chris

Hey Suzie002.

I was told that the sleeve could be stretched but only by consistently eating larger amounts. Say an extra tablespoon per day over a month could cause stretching. Very hard to do though as you do feel mighty sick and can or do vomit after eating just a little bit too much. I would imagine you would have to give it considerable effort to cause serious stretching.

Hope this helps and do check with your own surgeon as all opinions on this differ and there is just not enough data available to provide statistics.

From what I have heard, the stomach will naturally heal and increase from the surgery size to some degree but is unlikely to be stretched further. The message I got was that if I overate I would puke. The main cause of failure that I was warned of was regular consumption of small quantities of very high calorie foods.

I would imagine this would be affected by whether your surgeon does a LASF sleeve (which my surgeon tell me is the gold standard - look up on Youtude for LASF and gastric sleeve to see the surgery in detail) or something different.

My surgeon told me last year that they didn't have a lot of real statistics to see how much the stomach stretched over time but he reckoned there would be minimal stretching of the stomach. But like you, what you read on here seems to suggest the stomach does stretch. So it will be interesting to hear some of the other longer sleevers replies to see if they think their stomach has stretched. The surgeons all have their own ideas on the subject and all seem very different.
hugs
Jilly

I am not sleeved yet but have had a couple of visits with my surgeon and asked him about the chances of stretching my stomach out as I am terribly afraid of failing as I have had two lapbands and failed miserably with those. He said that the stretchy part of the stomach is the pouch part and that is what is removed, this leaves the top part of the stomach which is thicker and more muscle and does not stretch easily if at all.. This is his opinion ask your surgeon and do your research as all surgeons are different...

Lisab

Hi All,

I have read almost every post on here the past couple of weeks and posted myself and received some valuable feedback. Now I am concerned though. Different topics have postings that talk about stretching your stomach out so fast by eating quickly or drinking too much water. I know we have all had different surgeons but I am worried that some give the impression that it's so easy to stretch it out. Is that true? Can anyone give some feedback that their doctors have told them so that I know? Thank you.